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John Green's Paper Towns getting the Hollywood treatment


This news just makes me happy! John Green's 2008 novel Paper Towns has been picked up by Fox 2000, the folks who are bringing us The Fault in Our Stars in June. The 'folks' are actually a pair of women, Elizabeth Gabler and Erin Siminoff - just pointing it out because I'm usually kvetching about the lack of females in the film world; I have to celebrate women as driving forces when that's the reality. For the record, I have no interest in living in a totally girl-powered world, but it would be nice to get a little more balance. 

Anyway .... it's going to be something of a TFIOS reunion; Gabler and Siminoff are bringing back TFIOS writers extraordinaire Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber, producers Wyck Godfrey and Marty Bowen and Nat Wolff, the young actor who plays Augustus Water's best friend, Isaac. Wolff is quite the up and comer, he starred in Stuck in Love for TFIOS director Josh Boone - in fact he read for the part of Augustus before Boone decided on Ansel Elgort. You might have seen Wolff in Admission with Tina Fey and Paul Judd plus he's in the upcoming Gia Coppola-directed Palo Alto alongside James Franco, Val Kilmer, and Emma Roberts. That's set to screen at Telluride in April with a limited opening scheduled for May 9th. And, as you can see from the snap, Wolff and author Green really bonded on the set of The Fault in Our Stars


I am especially jazzed that Weber and Neustadter will be writing the script. The pair wrote 500 Days of Summer and The Spectacular Now adaptation and have several other book to movie adaptations in the works including Jojo Moyes Me Before You and Maria Semple's Where'd You Go Bernadette? Weber also wrote the script for Rosaline, based on Rebecca Serle's Shakespearian take, When You Were Mine, in pre-production now with Felicity Jones set to star. 

There's no mention of a director in Deadline's Paper Town piece; I suppose it's way too soon but I can't help but wonder if they'd like to bring Josh Boone back to direct??? 


I have a couple of John Green books on my tbr shelf already; An Abundance of Katherines, Looking for Alaska. I'll have to add Paper Towns; have you read it? Here's the publisher's overview:

Green melds elements from his Looking for Alaska and An Abundance of Katherines— the impossibly sophisticated but unattainable girl, and a life-altering road trip—for another teen-pleasing read. Weeks before graduating from their Orlando-area high school, Quentin Jacobsen's childhood best friend, Margo, reappears in his life, specifically at his window, commanding him to take her on an all-night, score-settling spree. Quentin has loved Margo from not so afar (she lives next door), years after she ditched him for a cooler crowd. Just as suddenly, she disappears again, and the plot's considerable tension derives from Quentin's mission to find out if she's run away or committed suicide. Margo's parents, inured to her extreme behavior, wash their hands, but Quentin thinks she's left him a clue in a highlighted volume of Leaves of Grass. Q's sidekick, Radar, editor of a Wikipedia-like Web site, provides the most intelligent thinking and fuels many hilarious exchanges with Q. The title, which refers to unbuilt subdivisions and copyright trap towns that appear on maps but don't exist, unintentionally underscores the novel's weakness: both milquetoast Q and self-absorbed Margo are types, not fully dimensional characters. Readers who can get past that will enjoy the edgy journey and off-road thinking
Have you read Paper Towns yet? If so, I'd love to hear your thoughts on the casting of Wolff as Quentin. I need your comments!